The True Origins Of The Infamous Swastika

As you may know, if you arrived here from the homepage, in support of the anti SOPA/PIPA movement I have posted the above picture which is a swastika with the acronym SOPA embedded in it with a link that leads to how you can help stop SOPA/PIPA from becomming harsh realities on the right sidebar. I also posted said picture as my profile picture on my personal facebook page  to which I have been met with major adversity. In the past 24 hours I have been called everything from a racist to a hate mongerer down to a “disgrace to my own race and Amerikkka” (I added the 3 k’s by creative license). A disgrace to Amerikkka? Maybe, but my own race?? Why? Is it because I compared the entertainment industry’s attempt to privatize & police the internet to (regular) Hitler & Nazi Germany‘s attempt to takeover the world? (No Pinky & The Brain)

I decided that instead of doing battle with my opposers, I would much rather educate the masses; those who have chosen to be educated rather than to blindly hate things they cannot comprehend.

Read below:

The swastika predates the ancient Egyptian symbol, the Ankh by Approximately 3,000 years (1000 BCE). The swastika was commonly used &  have been found on many artifacts such as pottery and coins dating from ancient Troy. During the following thousand years, the image of the swastika could be found in many cultures around the world, including in China, Japan, India, and southern Europe.

By the Middle Ages, the swastika was a well known, if not commonly used, symbol but was called by many different names: China (Wan), England (Fylfot), Germany (Hakenkreuz), Greece (Tetraskelion and gammadion), India (Swastika).

The swastika (Sanskrit: स्वस्तिक) is an equilateral cross with its arms bent at right angles, in either right-facing (卐) form in counterclockwise motion or its mirrored left-facing (卍) form in clockwise motion. Earliest archaeological evidence of swastika-shaped ornaments dates back to the Indus Valley Civilization of Ancient India as well as Classical Antiquity. Swastikas have also been used in other various ancient civilizations around the world. It remains widely used in Indian religions, specifically in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, primarily as a tantric symbol to evoke ‘shakti’ or the sacred symbol of auspiciousness. The swastika is also a Chinese character used in East Asia representing eternity and Buddhism.

The swastika is a repeating design, created by the edges of the reeds in a square basket-weave. Other theories attempt to establish a connection via cultural diffusion or an explanation along the lines of Carl Jung’s collective unconscious.

The genesis of the swastika symbol is often treated in conjunction with cross symbols in general, such as the sun cross of pagan Bronze Age religion. Beyond its certain presence in the “proto-writing” symbol systems emerging in the Neolithic nothing certain is known about the symbol’s origin. There are nevertheless a number of speculative hypotheses. One hypothesis is that the cross symbols and the swastika share a common origin in simply symbolizing the sun. Another hypothesis is that the 4 arms of the cross represent 4 aspects of nature – the sun, wind, water, soil. Some have said the 4 arms of cross are four seasons, where the division for 90-degree sections correspond to the solstices and equinoxes.The Hindus represent it as the Universe in our own spiral galaxy in the fore finger of Lord Vishu. This carries most significance in establishing the creation of the Universe and the arms as ‘kal’ or time, a calendar that is seen to be more advanced than the lunar calendar (symbolized by the lunar crescent common to Islam) where the seasons drift from calendar year to calendar year. The luni-solar solution for correcting season drift was to intercalate an extra month in certain years to restore the lunar cycle to the solar-season cycle. The Star of David is thought to originate as a symbol of that calendar system, where the two overlapping triangles are seen to form a partition of 12 sections around the perimeter with a 13th section in the middle, representing the 12 and sometimes 13 months to a year. As such, the Christian cross, Jewish hexagram star and the Muslim crescent moon are seen to have their origins in different views regarding which calendar system is preferred for marking holy days. Groups in higher latitudes experience the seasons more strongly, offering more advantage to the calendar represented by the swastika/cross.

Carl Sagan in his book Comet (1985) reproduces Han period Chinese manuscript (the Book of Silk, 2nd century BC) that shows comet tail varieties: most are variations on simple comet tails, but the last shows the comet nucleus with four bent arms extending from it, recalling a swastika. Sagan suggests that in antiquity a comet could have approached so close to Earth that the jets of gas streaming from it, bent by the comet’s rotation, became visible, leading to the adoption of the swastika as a symbol across the world. Bob Kobres in Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse (1992) contends that the swastika like comet on the Han Dynasty silk comet atlas was labeled a “long tailed pheasant star” (Di-Xing) because of its resemblance to a bird’s foot or track. Kobres goes on to suggest an association of mythological birds and comets also outside China.

In Life’s Other Secret (1999), Ian Stewart suggests the ubiquitous swastika pattern arises when parallel waves of neural activity sweep across the visual cortex during states of altered consciousness, producing a swirling swastika-like image, due to the way quadrants in the field of vision are mapped to opposite areas in the brain.

Alexander Cunningham suggested that the Buddhist use of the shape arose from a combination of Brahmi characters abbreviating the words su astí

Another early attestation is on pottery from the Samarra culture, dated to around 4000 BC. Joseph Campbell in an essay on The Neolithic-Paleolithic Contrast cites an ornament on a Late Paleolithic (10,000 BC) mammoth ivory bird figurine found near Kiev as the only known occurrence of such a symbol predating the Neolithic.

The swastika appears only very rarely in the archaeology of ancient Mesopotamia. It is found on prehistoric pottery, of which the Samarra bowl is the oldest known example, and on a number of early seal impressions, but then disappears from the record for the remainder of the Near Eastern Bronze Age.In India, Bronze Age swastika symbols were found at Lothal and Harappa, on Indus Valley seals.^[

Swastikas have also been found on pottery in archaeological digs in Africa, in the area of Kush and on pottery at the Jebel Barkal temples,  in Iron Age designs of the northern Caucasus (Koban culture), and in Neolithic China in the Majiabang, Dawenkou and Xiaoheyan cultures. Other Iron Age attestations of the swastika can be associated with Indo-European cultures such as the Indo-Iranians, Celts, Greeks, Macedonians and Germanic peoples and Slavs. The Tierwirbel (the German for "animal whorl" or "whirl of animals") is a characteristic motive in Bronze Age Central Asia, the Eurasian Steppe, and later also in Iron Age Scythian and European (Baltic and Germanic) culture, showing rotational symmetric arrangement of an animal motive, often four birds' heads. Even wider diffusion of this "Asiatic" theme has been proposed, to the Pacific and even North America (especially Moundville).

The swastika is a historical sacred symbol both to evoke 'Shakti' in tantric rituals and evoke the gods for blessings in Indian religions. It first appears in the archaeological record here around 2500 BC in the Indus Valley Civilization. It rose to importance in Buddhism during the Mauryan Empire and in Hinduism with the decline of Buddhism in India during the Gupta Empire. With the spread of Buddhism, the Buddhist swastika reached Tibet and China. The symbol was also introduced to Balinese Hinduism by Hindu kings. The use of the swastika by the Bön faith of Tibet, as well as later syncretic religions, such as Cao Dai of Vietnam and Falun Gong of China, can also be traced to Buddhist influence.

BONUS:

"The Christian Cross is Evil for the Same Reasons as the Swastika"

The Swastika has had a glowing history for a thousand years. Representing the creative force of the sun, good luck, regenerative power, and was used by everyone pre-WW2 including by Rudyard Kipling, Coca Cola and American fighter pilots. It was used by all cultures in a positive way. In one decade however, the Nazis used it in a negative way, affecting all of society. As a result, those who are moral reactionaries protest whenever they see the swastika, because it reminds them of the bad things that happened in history.

The Christian Cross has the same contradictory history. Its history is that it was a symbol for good. But, like the swastika, it has been used for much evil. Not by one group, however, but by many. And not only for a decade, but for millennia. Europe was plunged into the dark ages, where Christian paranoia and "good will" turned European development backwards; torture, death and pain were inflicted across multiple European countries from a centralized Church. The history of the Cross contains a massive period of misuse, just like the history of the Swastika, even though both used to be symbols of good.

Now, those who use the swastika are largely neo-fascists who do not mind too much about its terrible history. Likewise, Christians who still use their cross must also be uncaring about the atrocities made in its name.

“If we are going to hate the image of the swastika, despite its history, just because one man who used the symbol was slightly off his rocker, then what about the cross? Many men have worn that symbol and been off their rockers as well!

This is more then wrong, it is ass backwards. The person wearing the swastika may or may not be a nazi, but even if they are, they have not killed anyone themselves, so where is the problem? The person wearing the cross I can guarantee believes in the word of Christ. He may not kill anyone himself, but he is wearing the symbol that is responsible for so many deaths in history. I don't see how we can hate one of these symbols and not the other. Either we need to see more swastikas or less crosses around. I have no problem with swastikas, but would rather not see them myself, so you can see which way I think we should go. What do you think?”

"The Swasticross" by Chaos
www.KillChrist.com [site down]

That’s the dilemma that Christians are in. If they condemn the use of good symbols that have been used for mass evil, then they must condemn both the swastika and the cross. If they admit that actually they are only symbols, and although they’ve been used for evil, they can still be used for good, then such people should accept usage of the swastika and usage of the Cross. Both symbols share the same paradoxes. A person can only reject one and accept the other for one reason: They don’t care about the people involved. So, Christians don’t really mind that many were tortured and burned by the Cross, and on the Cross, just like neo-Nazis don’t really care (or believe) that Jews were murdered en masse by proponents of the swastika.

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